Handshake: Aung San Suu Kyi is congratulated by Thorbjoern Jagland chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee

In her long-awaited speech she said the prize had helped shatter her sense of isolation and ensured that the world would demand democracy in her military-controlled homeland.

Ms Suu Kyi claimed the award cast an enduring spotlight on the struggle for political freedom in Burma.

'We were not going to be forgotten,' she said.

Throughout her speech, Ms Suu Kyi explored her views on the ideals of peace, the causes of war, the bonds of common humanity and the power of kindness.

And she highlighted how violence and the imprisonment of political opponents were still issues in her country.

The 66-year-old pro-democracy leader said: 'Hostilities have not ceased, communal violence resulting in arson and murder were taking place just several days before I started out the journey that has brought me here today.

'It is to be feared that because the best known detainees have been released, the remainder, the unknown ones, will be forgotten.'

Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Price in 1991 but had been prevented from receiving it

She said there had been 'positive ' steps towards democratisation, but added: 'If I advocate cautious optimism it is not because I do not have faith in the future but because I do not want to encourage blind faith.'

Ms Suu Kyi branded the First World War 'a terrifying waste of youth and potential, a cruel squandering of the positive forces of our planet.

She added: 'Nearly a century on, we have yet to find a satisfactory answer.

'Are we not still guilty, if to a less violent degree, of recklessness, of improvidence with regard to our future and our humanity?

Suu Kyi was kept under house arrest for most of the past 24 years by Burma's military junta

Sign here: Aung San Suu Kyi puts her signature in the guestbook at the Nobel Institute in Oslo today

'War is not the only arena where peace is done to death. Wherever suffering is ignored, there will be the seeds of conflict, for suffering degrades and embitters and enrages.'

Royal approval: Queen Sonja of Norway and King Harald V congratulate Aung San Suu Kyi after she accepted her Nobel prize

Ms Suu Kyi then went on to hail an enlightened age in which basic human rights are widely accepted.

She said: 'We are fortunate to be living in an age when social welfare and humanitarian assistance are recognised not only as desirable but necessary.

'I am fortunate to be living in an age when the fate of prisoners of conscience anywhere has become the concern of peoples everywhere, an age when democracy and human rights are widely, even if not universally, accepted as the birthright of all.'

And she set peace as a common goal for humanity: 'Absolute peace in our world is an unattainable goal. But it is one towards which we must continue to journey, our eyes fixed on it as a traveller in a desert fixes his eyes on the one guiding star that will lead him to salvation.

'Even if we do not achieve perfect peace on earth, because perfect peace is not of this earth, common endeavours to gain peace will unite individuals and nations in trust and friendship and help to make our human community safer and kinder.

'Of the sweets of adversity - and let me say that these are not numerous - I have found the sweetest, the most precious of all, is the lesson I learnt on the value of kindness.

'Every kindness I received, small or big, convinced me that there could never be enough of it in our world.

'To be kind is to respond with sensitivity and human warmth to the hopes and needs of others. Even the briefest touch of kindness can lighten a heavy heart. Kindness can change the lives of people.'

She also expressed her hopes that there would one day be a world without the suffering of refugees.

'Ultimately our aim should be to create a world free from the displaced, the homeless and the hopeless, a world of which each and every corner is a true sanctuary where the inhabitants will have the freedom and the capacity to live in peace,' she said.

'Every thought, every word, and every action that adds to the positive and the wholesome is a contribution to peace.

'Each and every one of us is capable of making such a contribution. Let us join hands to try to create a peaceful world where we can sleep in security and wake in happiness.'